4:58am
Sound of morning muezzin call to prayer.
Today I leave Lilongwe and tonight I’ll be in Kampala, Uganda.
Slightly sunburned,
A bag of red dust covered clothes,
Mind more fully aware of the refining power of pain and hardship.
If I were to say one thing about this week I would say that pain and suffering are a part of life, allowing them to shape us in beautiful ways demands that we seek God’s help more than man’s.
I’ve seen some ugly in the pain here:
Sound of morning muezzin call to prayer.
Today I leave Lilongwe and tonight I’ll be in Kampala, Uganda.
Slightly sunburned,
A bag of red dust covered clothes,
Mind more fully aware of the refining power of pain and hardship.
If I were to say one thing about this week I would say that pain and suffering are a part of life, allowing them to shape us in beautiful ways demands that we seek God’s help more than man’s.
I’ve seen some ugly in the pain here:
the 24 year old girl so wasted from AIDS that her head is smaller than the head of her 2 year old daughter.
the 24 year old girl whose husband abandons her every year after his annual visit to impregnate her.
the fact that all you see in the villages are young women and old women, there are almost no women in the 30-50 age range anymore.
the fact that all you see in the villages are young women and old women, there are almost no women in the 30-50 age range anymore.
the 12 year old village girl who was being raped by her uncle and father and suffering it silently.
the 14 year old slum girl wracked with TB who coughs so hard and so much that she can’t sleep anymore and just lays wrapped in a sheet on her porch in the slum.
But there is beauty in the pain and beauty in the faithfulness of others here too.
But there is beauty in the pain and beauty in the faithfulness of others here too.
the husband who is standing by his 24 year old wife as she dies of AIDS and the women’s group who comes to visit her and carry her water.
the widow’s group that finds joy in singing and dancing and learning money making skills; the group that embraces an abandoned 24 year old mother of 3.
the young girls and the old women of the villages who have been empowered to take back their lives and their children. Who are standing tall proud of their businesses and healthy children.
the neighbor trained in rape intervention and counseling who identifies rape victims and works to bring the perpetrators to justice.
the grandmother who took in her granddaughter when no one else would and the HIV home based care support group that bikes the child 10 kilometers to the clinic several times each week.
You have pain and beauty wrapped so closely together here that sometimes you can’t see where one ends and the other begins.
5:22am
~A
You have pain and beauty wrapped so closely together here that sometimes you can’t see where one ends and the other begins.
5:22am
~A
Beautiful post. Thank you for taking the time to share what your eyes have seen and what your heart has felt.
ReplyDeleteThe hardships in my life seem so trivial compared with this. So different are they that I can no longer call them hardships.
ReplyDeleteWow, my friend Jill posted this on her Facebook profile, and this is truly awe-inspiring. Please continue posting what you see, both the beautiful and difficult to recount--it's extremely meaningful.
ReplyDeleteIt's so hard to know what to say in response to this.
ReplyDeleteThe simple things - LOVE the cooking photo, and the boy at the pump. They are beautiful!